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Heeeeello, it’s ZUN. Thank you so much for reading "Touhou Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia.” Since the number of characters has increased, I feel like a lot of people are demanding a new collection of set materials. But isn’t this official derivative work, in this style, also a book in the spirit of Touhou?

The style this time is a “weekly publication.” The big theme is fabrication and sedition through words. With the spread of SNS News and one-stop news sites, it feels like you don’t even have to read articles anymore. In other words, SNS and one-stop sites have begun to encourage the practice of imagining the contents of an article just by reading the title. The end result is that people, without reading the original article, commit what they’ve seen to heart and then get into heated arguments. Recently, this practice has become commonplace.

In the present day, where these readers have a routine of complementing their own thoughts through this practice, there is a widespread trend toward the repeated spread of exciting, negative news stories. Flooding an online post with comments is just one example. So, we are frequently drawn down the emotional, reactionary path. It feels like nowadays, this is influencing us not just on an individual level, but on a country-wide one.

What I created while trying to veeeeeery loosely turn this strained state of social affairs into a Gensokyo-esque parody, is this book. While there are articles whose words possess a certain level of falsehood, the pictures and general gist of these occurrences are factual. I aimed to add headlines in a way that the impression they give is drastically different from the contents. However, having every new character appear just in words is difficult. Eventually, I had to stop to meet my publication deadline, and it became a book which indicated the existence of the Lunarians.

But, most young people really don’t read weekly publications, do they? I think that a lot of the people who will read this book aren’t subscribed to them. In order to make this book, I read a few weekly publications (especially with my editor, Mr. Okoki), but it’s really narrowed down to “actor scandals,” “government stories,” “health stories,” and “scandalous photos,” isn’t it? I organized my articles with this in mind. Some of the articles have an actual basis, so I’ll be very happy if you read it and think “oh, this is about that!” A few of those spots have been strongly influenced by a certain country’s president… Haha.

To those who kindly drew the illustrations, Ms. Aioi Aoi, Mr. Genji Asai, Ms. Azuma Aya, Mr. Amamiya Tokuhisa, ALISON, Ms. Mizunaka Kaho, TOKIAME, nyanya, Mr. Hiiragi Akio, Mr. Masakichi, Mr. Mizutaki, to the artist who drew the manga, Mr. Arata Toshihira… Thank you to everyone for bringing a jumble of articles to life. Last, to Mr. Okoki, who worked together with me until the 99th hour to challenge this reckless book, thank you.

さてさて、またゲームなり本なりＣＤなり２軒目ラジオなりで会いましょう。

Well, well, be it a game, a book, a CD, or Niken-me Radio, let’s meet again.

上海アリス幻樂団 ＺＵＮ（新幹線で隣のおじさんが、週刊誌の袋とじを開けて真面目な顔で眺めてました）

Team Shanghai Alice ZUN (The old man next to me on the bullet train opened a double-paged weekly and was gazing at it with a serious face.)